An Caillte Fien
by Bundibird
Summary: When Harry gets kidnapped, he learns a great deal about himself and, surprisingly, Malfoy. Now, Harry and Draco must embrace their heritage and work together if they have any hopes of defeating the darkest evil the world has ever seen. DISCONTINUED.
1. Prologue

**IMPORTANT!**** This is a 'taster' if you like of a future chapter. It is NOT the start of the story. Just a snippet of a future chapter. Got that? Awesome. Now read on! ;p**

**Disclaimer****: (Pertains to entire story) Sigh I've said it over and over again… yet it seems the message has not sunk in. I do not, in any way, shape or form, own Harry Potter or anything that relates to it. All I have done here (and in the following however many chapters) is borrow the characters and places, and then played around with the plot a bit for my own (and hopefully your) entertainment. So you can't sue me. Sticks tongue out Oh, also, "D'Arvit' belongs to Eoin Colfer, who wrote Artemis Fowl. I've become quite fond of that as a swear word!**

**AN****: Hey folks! The idea was floating around in my head and I decided that I would write it down. I don't know if I'll continue it or not… **_**Kestrel**_** seems to have been a complete failure but **_**Street**__**Rules**__**Apply**_** seems to be doing well. So I guess I'll see what you all think of this and then decide. It's quite different from my other stories… but still very much AU. Hope you enjoy it! Let me know what you think!**

**The title is a (very loose) Gaelic translation of **_**The Lost Elves.**_** Not particularly proud of the title… but oh well. It's the story that matters.**

**(My hands are bloody FREEZING!!! And I can't wear gloves because then I press 4 buttons instead of 1! Grr… So please excuse any typos that my come up in this chap.)**

**There are 5 bits of Elvish in this chap, and the translations are down the bottom.**

**Love Bundi**

**OoO**

_**An Caillte Fien Prologue**_

OoO

Harry was in his third class of the day; the one right after lunch.

The classroom was warm, his stomach was full… it was no wonder he was drifting off.

He supposed that the fact that it was A History of Magic was only helping his sleepy state.

Attempting weakly to fight the drowsiness for a few moments longer, Harry looked around the classroom.

As usual, Hermione was studiously taking notes, pausing only to glare at Ron, who was snoring freely.

Dean and Seamus were both fighting valiantly against sleep; their heads lolling down towards their desks only to be jerked back up again.

Neville was staring blankly at his page, doodling absent-mindedly on its corner.

Across on the other side of the room, Draco Malfoy was leaning back in his chair, appearing to be dosing lightly.

Crabbe and Goyle were both staring blankly off into space; the only difference from their normal behaviour being the slightly crossed eyes.

Pansy Parkinson was writing furiously on a sheet of paper… but judging by the murderous look in her eye, she was not taking notes on 14th Century mermaid hunting.

Satisfied that no one (apart from Hermione, naturally) was paying attention to Professor Binns and that he wouldn't miss anything important (or interesting), Harry let his eyes drift closed.

Within moments he was asleep.

OoO

"_My Lord. Everyone has arrived." A grovelling voice simpered._

"_Good." Replied a cold, icy voice that sounded like two metal pipes being ground together. "Make ready the battle formation. I want the manticores and chimeras in front – far enough away from each other that they don't go for each other of course – and the Death Eaters behind. The lowest ranked are to be the closest to the front, back through to my Inner Circle. How long do you estimate it will take?"_

"_Twenty minutes at the most My Lord. Within half an hour we will be at their gates."_

_There was an evil chuckle._

"_Good. Let me know as soon as they are ready."_

"_Yes My Lord."_

_There was a pause, before, "Well? What are you waiting for? Get out of my sight! Incompetent fool!"_

"_O-of course My Lord! Certainly My Lord! Yes My Lord, of course!" _

_There was sounds of scuffling as someone backed quickly out of the room._

_There was another evil chuckle._

"_By sunset… Hogwarts will be little more than dust."_

OoO

Harry awoke with a yell as he threw himself backwards, the chair underneath him toppling to the ground and the desk in front of him being kicked up in the air to come crashing down onto his chest. From the Slytherin side of the room he could hear similar noises.

"Eugg…" Harry groaned from under the table.

"Harry?" Hermione asked concernedly. "Are you ok? What happened?"

"Harry?" came another voice, from the same direction the earlier noises had come from. "El nae a brouché?" (1)

"A catrictia mel d'arvitting pouchou." (2) Came Harry's grumbled response.

There was a light chuckle, then Harry felt the weight on his chest lift of, and a hand appeared in front of his face. Harry grasped the hand and hauled himself to his feet.

"Much better. Thanks Draco."

Draco smiled in response. Then his mood tuned sombre as Harry asked "Did you get that?"

"Of course. Why do you think I fell of my chair? We all would have gotten it; the others will be here in fifteen minutes, tops."

Everyone was staring at the two boys, but neither of them noticed.

"Draco…" Harry started, uncertainly. "Are you ready for this? You don't have to come with – "

Draco pointed a finger at Harry. "Don't you even finish that question Harry. I know I speak for all of us when I say of course we're coming with you. You need us. You can't do this without us. And as for am I ready… well… I don't know if I'll ever be, but the time id now, and we can't do anything more about that."

Harry smiled. "Ok then."

Draco reached forward and grasped Harry's shoulder. "Mellon ah'noi." (3)

"Drella menai" (4)

The surrounding students seemed shocked into silence. Harry and Malfoy? Friendly? Not attempting to kill each other? And speaking some weird language? Strangeness beyond vocalisation.

Harry reached into his pocket and drew out a small wooden chest, about the size of his palm. Placing it on the desk in front of him, he waved his hand over it and watched as it grew to fill the entire space on top of the desk. Beside him, Draco was doing the same thing.

Hermione gasped, the first one to break out of the stunned silence of the onlookers. "Wandless magic…" she whispered, before lapsing once again into silence. She needed to see what else happened before she jumped to any conclusions.

Simultaneously, Harry and Draco flipped open the lids to their respective trunks, revealing a set of what looked like olden day war gear.

"Draco… what – ?" Parkinson asked, confusion and a bit of anger etched all over her features. Draco was consorting with the enemy! And not just any enemy… Potter of all people!

"Not now Pansy." Draco interrupted, unbuttoning the top of his outer school robes. Quickly and smoothly, Harry and Draco removed their outer layer of robes, revealing clothing that was slightly less than the current fashion. They both looked like they'd just stepped out of a pirate movie.

Harry wore a pair of fitted (but not tight) brown pants with a simple leather belt and leather boots, along with a woodland green, long sleeved, loose shirt with a slightly open neck. Some might say that it was a pirate style shirt.

Draco wore the same as Harry in regards to the pants, shoes and belt, but his shirt was slightly different. It was just as loose as Harry's, but it had buttons down the middle and it was a deep red colour.

Both boys paused when they saw the colour of the others' shirt. Draco chucked. "Switching sides are we?"

Harry snorted in response. "There are no sides Draco. Besides, this colour looks better on me."

The two (strangely dressed) teens each reached into their trunks, pulling out what looked like a mail shirt and a thick strip of hard leather with two straps around it. Without speaking, Harry and Draco slipped these leather strips onto their left arms, and then slipped the mail shirt over their heads.

On top of the mail shirt they each put a long sleeved brown jacket type thing, with thin arms but a thick bodice.

After putting on a pair of fingerless leather gloves, they then whipped out several other protection type things and put them over their calves and thighs.

They then started on the weapons that had been lying underneath the clothes.

The entire class was watching in fascinated yet completely confused silence.

Even Professor Binns had noticed that his students were even less focussed on him than usual, and was blinking owlishly down at Draco and Harry from his desk.

Harry and Draco started strapping their various weapons in place.

The weapons were really works of art. It seemed that Harry and Draco each had their own unique designs. The hilts of the twin daggers they strapped to the right side of their chests under a small flap and on their left calf, the handle of the darts and the throwing knife, strapped to the left side of their chests and their right calf, and the blades of the throwing stars, attached behind the wrists, all had intricate designs on them.

Harry's design was of small maple leaves and snakes, all twisted together in a beautiful and elegant design, randomly coloured by tiny emeralds studded into the metal.

Draco's design was of swirling ribbons of different widths and thicknesses, also randomly decorated by miniature jewels, his being diamonds. They were both beautiful designs that also added an extra magical thrust to the weapon when used.

Not that the students knew that. They just thought the designs were beautiful.

"Harry… what are – ?"

"I don't have time to explain at the moment Ron." Harry interrupted. "He's going to be here in less than half an hour and we need to prepare. I'm sorry I didn't tell you and Hermione earlier, I was under strict instruction. So was Draco. I will explain everything to you after we've beaten him."

This only served to confuse and anger Ron more. "What? Who'll be here? Why do you need to prepare? Who's instruction? What haven't you told us? Apart from the fact that you are all buddy buddy with Malfoy?" The venom in his voice was clearly audible.

The blonde in question looked up from what he was doing (tightening a strap around his upper arm) to look coldly at the red head.

Harry grunted in annoyance as a buckle he was trying to do up flicked open. "Look Ron, I said not now. For now, let me concentrate. I will explain everything later."

"Munda de Du'rané…" (5)

"Hey!" Harry said sharply, spinning around to Draco. "Don't even think that! He wants us to doubt ourselves, and if anything, that will be our downfall. We are more than a match for him. We just need to believe it."

Draco nodded silently, turning back to his trunk, from which he pulled his sword and began to fasten it securely around his hips.

The swords that he and Harry secured to their hips were by far the most beautiful and intricately designed.

Harry's sheath was inlaid with gold and studded with emeralds around the same design that was carved on his other weaponry, and Draco's sheath was inlaid with silver and studded with diamonds, also around the same design on his other weaponry. But they weren't too heavily adorned. No need to add unnecessary excess weight.

After the swords, Harry and Draco each swing a quiver full of arrows onto their backs, picked up a bow in their left hands, and swung a shield over their shoulder.

The entire process had taken just five minutes.

"Right." Harry said, after he flipped the lid of the now empty trunk closed, a look of determination on his face. "You and Jas will be in charge of strengthening the existing wards around the school and creating new ones. Benj and Gabrielle will activate the proximity and booby traps, Kisa and Tristan will check and secure the perimeter and I will secure the castle occupants. But before we do any of that, we need to let Sev know what's going on. We have a maximum of twenty five minutes left."

Draco nodded once, his face a mirror of Harry's own determination, before turning and striding to the door with Harry, leaving a very confused (and, as in the case of Ron and Pansy, angry) class behind them.

They were nearly through the door when Hermione called out, in a voice close to tears: "Harry – what is going on!? You suddenly yell out in pain, you don't tell us what happened, you start talking to _Malfoy_ of all people in some made up language… then both of you get all dressed up as though you're going to a fancy dress party, and you refuse to tell us what's happening! What is going on? Why are you dressed like that? You look like a pair of Elvin Warriors going to war!" 

Harry smiled slightly. "You always were the more perceptive Hermione." He said, as he dropped his glamour's, allowing his ear to grow back into its natural shape and a point to stick out elegantly from his hair. After noticing Harry had dropped his glamour, Draco did too, with the same effect.

Harry continued. "We _are_ a pair of Elvin Warriors going to war."

With that, Harry strode out the door and down the hall, Draco right beside him.

OoO

**TRANSLATIONS**

One:_El nae a brouché?_ Are you ok?

Two: _A catrictia mel d'arvitting pouchou._ I'd be better if someone'd get this d'arvitting desk off me.

Three: _Mellon ah'noi_. Friends always

Four: _Drella menai_. Through all and anything.

Five: _Munda de Du'rané_… If there is a tomorrow.

OoO

**So what did you all think? Let me know if I should continue or not!! I have a fair bit of it planned out. I get bored on my way to College you see.**

**Did you like it or not? Let me know! Personally I don't really like the prologue. I was tossing up between this and another chapter as the prologue… but I decided that the other one would work better as chapter one, and this would work better as the prologue. The coming chapters will be better, I assure you! I think everyone seemed a little OoC in this… I tried to fix it… but it didn't work. Oh well.**

**Let me know! **

**Bundi**


	2. Kidnapped

**AN****: Wow! Thanks for all the reviews guys! I really appreciate it! Hope you all like this chapter! **

**This chapter is the START of the story. The previous thing was a taster of what is to come. The story starts HERE.**

**This is set post OotP by the way. I forgot to mention that earlier. So Harry and Co. will be in their 6****th**** year and they will all be 16. So Sirius is already dead :cries: but Dumbledore is still alive. :Cheers!:**

**This is NOT a slash story! If that's all you are looking for in this story, I suggest you turn back now. I repeat… this is NOT a slash story! Harry and Draco are just FRIENDS. Shudders Slash…**

_**Italics are the thoughts of the person who the section is centred around.**_

**Love Bundi **

_**An Caillte Fien Kidnapped**_

Harry awoke suddenly as he heard his bedroom door open.

Opening his eyes, but otherwise remaining perfectly still, Harry saw three people shrouded in cloaks enter, and he knew immediately that it wasn't Uncle Vernon coming in to tell him about his 'too noisy' bird. Hedwig was out hunting anyway; the window open and awaiting her return.

Slowly, so as to attract no attention, Harry slipped his hand under his pillow, aiming for his wand. These people may not mean him any harm, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

He had just grasped his wand and was in the process of drawing it cautiously out when one of the intruders laughed.

"There is no point fighting us Harry Potter. You will be coming with us."

Harry had frozen when the person had spoken, but then, realizing that he had obviously been caught going for his wand, abandoned all pretence of being asleep.

With the speed of a striking snake, born from hours of practice in the DA, Harry whipped his wand out and pointed it at the intruders. "EXPELLIARM – Ah!" Clearly, although he was fast, the other man was faster. Harry's wand flew smoothly out of his hand before he had even completed the incantation.

But wait… the other person hadn't even said anything! And there was no wand (save for Harry's, which the man was holding in his hand) in sight! How had he…?

_Uh oh…_

Hermione had mentioned something to Harry on one of their last DA meetings that they should all try and learn wandless magic, as it could prove invaluable if ever they were caught without their wand. Obviously this person could use wandless magic.

"Nice try Mr Potter." The man who was holding Harry's wand said. "But we don't need wands."

_Funny, I worked that out for myself._

The man waved his hand gently and the desk next to Harry's bed turned into a stuffed rabbit.

Harry's eyes darted around the room, looking for a possible escape route.

He really felt like a cornered animal. He was standing in front of his bed (he didn't remember standing up, but apparently he had), in nothing but his tracksuit pants, with no wand and three people who most likely meant him harm standing between him and the door who were apparently armed with wandless magic.

His eyes settled briefly on the open window. He could jump. If when he landed he was still able to run he could take cover behind the huge oak tree then escape though the loose plank in the fence. Assuming he made it that far.

To do that though, he would need either a weapon or a distraction. His eyes flickered around the items that were within his easy reach looking for something that would provide either of those.

Right… stuffed rabbit… pillow… quill… piece of parchment…a single sand-shoe. Great. The one thing he could have used as a weapon had been turned into a squishy toy. Brilliant.

He looked back up at his intruders, two of whom were looking at him with something akin to amusement. The third, although Harry's analysis of all pros and cons regarding jumping out the window to using a sand-shoe as a weapon had taken less then three seconds, was shifting impatiently from foot to foot.

"What do you want?" Harry asked, standing up straighter and trying to sound intimidating. He may have pulled it off, but for the fact that he was wearing a pair of too-big tracksuit pants and was shivering slightly in the cold.

Oh yes, a very intimidating impression.

The man who had spoken before replied. "You should check to see what your guests want _before_ you throw curses at them."

"I'd prefer to be safe rather than sorry." Harry bit out flatly. "And how do you know me?"

The man smiled. "Harry Potter, everyone knows you. Some know more about you than others of course; your friends, teachers etc. we also know more about you than the average person. In fact… we know more about you than you do."

"Huh?" Harry was starting to feel distinctly uncomfortable. What the hell did these people want? And what on earth did they mean by knowing more about him than he himself did?

His eyes flickered briefly to the window again. First chance he got, he was out of there. Distraction or weapon or not, he'd make a break for it. He assumed that these people were here on Voldemort's orders, and thus, whatever they were here for spelt nothing good for Harry.

The person in front of him continued. "We know something about you Harry Potter, which you do not know… Dumbledore does not know… your God Father did not know… even your parents did not know. But the time has come for you to find out shenalar lea. (1) And for that you must come with us."

The man who was shifting impatiently grunted in annoyance. "Let's hurry up and do this already!" The man's voice sounded oddly familiar. But Harry didn't ponder that fact.

There was no way he was going _anywhere_ with these people, and the moment the main speaker's attention shifted to the impatient man with the familiar voice, Harry shot towards the window.

Within one leap he was at the window and half way out, holding on to the sill for support. He didn't even pause to consider the drop that lay between him and the ground before letting go.

To his combined shock and horror however, he didn't fall. On the contrary; he came back up through the window and into his bedroom.

Harry kicked viciously out at the pair (or was it pairs?) of hands that were grasping his ankles, but they held firm. He lunged again for the window, but was again dragged back inside. He started to panic.

Harry would have hollered for help, had a hand not clamped down tightly over his mouth a second before he opened it.

_Note to self… _said a part of Harry's brain that had clearly not heard the 'panic' message sent out moments earlier, _If faced with any sort of danger, yell for help immediately. If it's a false alarm you can apologise later. If it's not… you may never have the chance to apologise to anyone ever again._

Two of the three men were holding tightly onto Harry; one with one hand tightly over his mouth and the other around his upper chest, and the other one holding onto Harry's waist and lower arms in a desperate attempt to quell the frantic thrashing.

The third man, the speaker, stood in front of Harry, a mildly impressed expression on his face. "That was quite a daring escape attempt!" He looked through the window and his eyes widened in surprise. "You do realise that we are two storeys up, yes?"

Harry's only response was a heated glare as he continued to thrash, attempting to get free from his captors' grasp.

Then he found a grove in the hand that was covering his mouth, and he bit down hard on it.

The man cried out in pain and shock, but didn't remove his hand. He applied more pressure to it, so that it was impossible for Harry's mouth to move much at all, much less to bit him.

"Will you hurry up and place the decoy, Nelathor? He just bit me!" The man hissed furiously.

_Decoy? What does he mean?_

The man name Nelathor reached into his robes and pulled out two things. One was a vial of some form of liquid. A potion of some kind. The other glinted dangerously in the moonlight.

_Shit._

At the sight of the knife in Nelathor's hands, Harry's eyes widened in horror and unbidden images sprang into his mind.

_Tri-Wizard Cup… Graveyard…Cedric… Wormtail…Knife… Voldemort…_

He had paused in his thrashings for long enough to process these thoughts and images, but then he started up again; this time thrashing in such panic and with such fervour that the two men started having difficulty holding him down.

"Nelathor…!" One grunted, struggling to keep the writing Harry in his grasp.

"It won't hurt! You'll barely feel it! It'll just be a simple prick on the finger!" Nelathor said, attempting to calm Harry down. His words did not even penetrate Harry's brain.

Harry was beyond panic, the images in his brain swirling in around, reminding him of some of the most terrifying moments in his life. He still had his eyes on the knife, and he was shouting incoherent words into the hand over his mouth, attempting furiously to escape.

"Just – ow! – Do it!" The man holding Harry's mouth bit out, getting whacked hard in the forehead by Harry's thrashing head.

Nelathor darted forwards and bent down, grasping one of Harry's hands tightly. He brought the knife up and swept its point across one of Harry's fingers. Only a few drops of blood came out, but that was all he needed.

He stepped back, safely out of reach of Harry's still flailing body, and prised the cork out of the vial. Once the lid was off, he tilted the knife, allowing a drop of Harry's blood to fall into the vial.

Smoke started to form in the vial, spilling out over the top to drift down onto the floor. Nelathor gently placed the vial on the ground, where it soon disappeared amidst all the smoke that spewed out of it.

Harry's mind went almost completely blank as he saw this. There was just one image still in his brain: The one of Voldemort rising out of the smoke on the night that he regained human shape.

Harry pushed back so forcefully that the two men holding him were pushed back into the wall. Harry was seemingly frozen in terror, his pupils dilated and his eyes so wide that you could see mostly white as he pushed back into the wall with every inch of strength that he had, attempting to get as far away from the smoke as possible.

He was so panicked that he was forgetting to breath. The room was starting to swim before his eyes. Whether that was the lack of oxygen getting to him or the panic causing a systems overload, he didn't know or care. All that mattered was what he would see when the smoke cleared.

The smoke started to thin. Harry could see a shape lying on the floor. Something finally clicked in his brain and he remembered that he needed oxygen. He started breathing again, but they were quick, shallow breaths.

After a few moments, the smoke finally cleared enough for Harry to see the shape on the floor for what it was.

An exact, identical, sleeping and breathing clone of himself.

Nelathor glanced quickly at the frozen Harry in the corner, studying his tracksuit pants for a moment, before turning to the sleeping Harry on the floor and waving his hand. A pair of tracksuit pants identical to the ones panicked Harry was wearing appeared on the sleeping Harry.

Panicked Harry remained frozen in terror against the wall as Nelathor levitated sleeping Harry onto the bed and under the covers. He slipped Harry's wand under the pillow.

"There," he said cheerfully. "Now no one will notice you are gone. That clone will act exactly as you would. No one will notice the difference. Not even your owl, and animals are more tuned in to such matters than humans."

Harry's eyes stayed glued to the Harry now sleeping soundly under the covers, and they widened more (quite a feat considering how wide they were already) as he realised the implications of this.

No one would know he was gone. No one would come looking for him.

He was totally and utterly on his own.

He was in deep trouble.

He only got to ponder these thoughts for a moment however before he felt a truly horrible feeling, similar to that of a portkey… but worse, heard a faint pop, and the world disappeared.

OoO

Draco clenched and unclenched his fists for what seemed like the millionth time.

_I am cold, I am hungry, I am (though I would NEVER admit this out loud) scared, and I have been sitting in this blasted room for hours! What the hell is going on!?_

He had, up until a few hours ago, been quite comfortably reading a book. Sure, it'd been a bit late, but he was a night creature. All Slytherin's were. But then, just when he was getting to the best part of the book, he was rudely interrupted by three people coming (quite uninvited!) into his room.

When asked what they wanted, one of them answered in some cryptic manner; saying something about knowing than Draco did about himself. What on earth was all of that about!?

Draco then suspected that his father had sent them to try and change his mind about the whole 'joining Voldemort' issue. He told them that he didn't want a bar of it. The one in the middle then had proceeded to announce that Draco could come either quietly, or they would take him by force. Either way, they were adamant that he would go with them.

Naturally, Draco had refused. There had then ensued a rather exhausting struggle which had involved a confiscated wand, a broken vase, at least two black eyes and a broken shin. Not Draco's of course.

Draco had managed to come out of the scuffle with only a cut on one finger. Unfortunately, he also came out of the scuffle with his arms pinned to his sides and in the tight grip of the two men.

He had then the privilege of seeing the third man; the one that had done all the talking, drop a few drops of the blood from Draco's finger into a vial, which had then produced an exact replica of himself.

Then, another indignity to add to the list, he had been apparated away from his home and into some hallway, where he was dragged, fighting the whole way of course, to the end and tossed into this room, where he had been ever since!

He could only assume that this was either his father's or Voldemort himself's idea of coercion. They could have tried a more direct method. Such as 'Join me or I shall kill you.'

Draco sighed angrily. _You'd think Father'd be proud of me. Refusing to have my life dictated to me by some mad over lord. A Malfoy is not supposed to be in the servitude of anyone. And bugger me if I'm going to follow my Father's crazy footsteps in breaking the Malfoy Code._

No sir. Draco's life was his own. He'd always hated it when his father had told him what to do, but at least with his father he could always say "get bent" if the order was too outlandish and risk only a brief cut in his pocket money allowance.

Do that with You-Know-Who however… and all you had to look forward to was a long, drawn out and painful death.

No thank you. Draco fully intended on graciously declining Voldemort's offer and getting away with his life. His full life, thank you very much.

Draco was about to start pacing again, something he had become quite fond of in the last few hours, when there was noise from beyond the door he had come in by.

"Bloody hell, he was more trouble than the last one!" A man's voice cried. Draco recognised it as the voice of the man who he'd smashed the vase on.

"He seems a bit calmer now though." Came the voice of the one who had done all the talking. There was suddenly a dull thud, followed by scuffling noises and a round of curses. (The simply verbal kind; not the 'pain ensues' kind)

"I spoke too soon." The second man spoke again, cheerfully. He was clearly not one of the ones dealing with their new captive.

Draco's eyes lit up. _New captive…_

This could be his chance to escape! They were clearly struggling with who ever it was that they had, which meant that they would be distracted for long enough for him to make a break for it.

As soon as that door opened…

Draco moved quickly to a spot in front of the door. It opened outward, as far as he remembered. That would give him an advantage.

He didn't have to wait long. The grunts of exertion and scuffling noises were getting louder, and a moment later, the door opened.

Draco shot forwards like a bullet out of a gun. Of course, he didn't know anything about guns, so if explaining the situation, he would have used a different analogy.

He had a brief glimpse of the three people who had 'visited' him earlier and a fourth person with messy, dark hair, before he went flying through the middle of them, knocking them all down.

He didn't even pause to survey the damage before he was off down the hallway, taking a sharp left at the end. He got a shock when, a moment later, someone shot past him. He realised it must be the other person that had been about to join him in his room.

Draco could hear the shouts and pursuing footsteps behind him, so he quickened his pace to catch up with the person slightly ahead of him.

The two of them raced at a speed one would have thought impossible through a maze of halls and passageways. If ever they came upon a stair case there was an unspoken agreement between the two and they ran up it.

They were going so fast that neither had time to look and see who his fellow escapee was. If either of them had, they would have gotten a rather large shock. But neither of them did, so the shock remained undiscovered for the time being.

They ran for a while, and it was a wonder that they had not yet been caught. But finally there came a time when they both needed to stop and catch their breath.

Again, by an unspoken agreement they both veered off to the left where they saw a large statue of what appeared to be a wood nymph, and went behind it, leaning against it and staring at the ceiling; out of sight of anyone simply strolling down the hallway.

As they were catching their breath, Draco's fellow escapee spoke, his words coming in short bursts, interrupted by his need for air. "Do you… have any idea… how to get out of… here? Or are you… just running… on instinct?"

Draco replied with his usual sneering voice, marred slightly by the same need for air. "Does it look like… I have… a map… of the place?"

There was a small noise of confusion from the person beside him, then a sharp intake of breath. "Malfoy?"

Draco turned his head to finally take a look at the person next to him. His jaw dropped. "Potter?"

OoO

Harry was totally puffed. He could still feel the panic induced adrenaline coursing through his body, but he currently couldn't go a step further without a break.

He was really glad that he had endeavoured to stay fit, even after he'd been booted off the Quidditch team… if he hadn't kept fit, there was no way he would have gotten as far as he had.

He had already been tired out from his struggle back in his room. After they had apparated (for he assumed that was what had happened) into the hallway, Harry had taken a moment to regain his senses.

He had been kidnapped. There had been a living, breathing dummy placed in his stead. No one would notice his absence. He had just recently relived pretty much the whole of the experience from fourth year over in his brain. And to top it all of; he had been apparated to some random place probably in the middle of nowhere.

As soon as all of these thoughts had been processed, he had had just one more thought. _Escape._

That was when he had thrown his body backwards and into one of the two men still holding him. He managed to disentangle himself from the grip of that man, but there was still the other one to contend with. By the time he was done with the first man, the second one had cottoned on, using all of his strength to stop Harry's struggles. Then the first man was back on his feet again and all hope of escape was practically lost.

But that didn't stop Harry from fighting anyway.

They slowly made their way down the hallway, nearer to a door which Harry supposed was about to become his new room, with him fighting like a wild animal about to be put into a cage the whole time.

Finally, when Nelathor had swung the door open, there had been a blessed stroke of luck.

Apparently these weird freaks were collecting people, as there had been another person in the room that Harry was about to enter, and he had burst out in a flurry of blonde hair and dark green robes to canon into Harry and his struggling captors, knocking them all into the ground.

Somehow, Harry had managed to stay on his feet. In the ensuing madness, he had disentangled himself from the grasp of the men and looked up to see the tail end of the other person disappearing around the corner. With one swift kick to the head of the man on the floor reaching for his ankle he was off; not only catching up with the other, but overtaking him too.

Then they had run. They had run until they couldn't run anymore. Then they had hidden behind a statue to catch their breath. A thought occurred to Harry. Did either of them know where they were going? Or were they just running blindly?

"Do you… have any idea… how to get out of… here? Or are you… just running… on instinct?" he asked, his breathlessness clearly evident.

The answering sneer sounded just as breathless. "Does it look like… I have… a map… of the place?"

Wait… that sneer… there was only one person who would possibly be able to pull of such a brilliant sneer in this situation. But surely not…?

Harry looked to his left. His jaw dropped as he gasped. "Malfoy?"

He saw Draco's eyebrow go down as he frowned. Then he saw the look of utter shock on Draco's face when he turned and saw who his running partner was. "Potter?"

"What are you doing here?" The two puffed teens asked simultaneously.

"I was kidnapped." Came the simultaneous response.

They both blinked and raised an eyebrow in confusion.

"Wait…" Harry said, "If you were kidnapped too… then who the heck are our kidnappers? I had thought Death Eaters but…"

"What makes you so sure it isn't Death Eaters?"

"You were kidnapped too." Harry replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Apparently." He added, a slightly suspicious light flickering to life in his eyes.

"I repeat." Draco sneered, his lip curling. "Why does that mean it wasn't Death Eaters?"

Harry looked at Draco as if he were mad. "Why wouldn't it?" he asked, truly confused.

Draco frowned slightly, then chucked. It was not a chuckle with any warmth in it however. "Oh. I see. You think that because my father is a Death Eater, that means I am too right?"

Harry's silence was all the answer he needed.

Draco glared at him disdainfully. "Well I'm not."

When Harry raised a disbelieving eyebrow, he elaborated.

"Thank you very much, but I don't fancy having every aspect of my life dictated to me by some maniacal mad man who's trying to take over the world! Item two on the Malfoy Code, right after 'Gold is Power;' I don't know how my father missed it, he drilled the rest of the Code into me, but there you are… 'A Malfoy's life shall never be run by anyone other than himself. Includes wives, parents (once after the age of 15), rising rulers and garden gnomes.' I don't quite know how the garden gnomes came to be in there however… I think it might have had something to do with my great-great uncle Midelwaut."

Harry stared at Draco. Draco had clearly wanted to say this for a long time. And now that the opportunity had arisen, he was taking full advantage of it.

Draco continued, undeterred by Harry's stare.

"So anyway, when Father told me that You-Know-Who wanted me to join the Death Eaters, I politely declined. Even asked him around for dinner to show that there were no hard feelings! He didn't accept of course. Father was furious. You-Know-Who wasn't particularly chuffed either I suppose. But moving on; I was reading in my room earlier tonight, when those three guys that had you came in and grabbed me, taking me – quite against my will, I assure you! – and put me in that blasted little room you were about to join me in. I was thinking that it was my Father's idea of coercion. Then you showed up – a nice little distraction – I took the opportunity and ran, you joined me, and now here we are catching our breath behind this statue."

Draco paused and looked at Harry, who was staring at him with a slightly open mouth and a totally incredulous expression on his face.

Draco realised that he had just spent a good deal of time ranting about rather personal issues to his worst enemy.

"Er… yes… so…" He said, trying to regain some dignity, "In light of this evidence… I concur that our kidnappers could very well be Death Eaters."

Harry stared for a moment longer at Draco, and then looked away, saying "Er…right then. So they could be Death Eaters…" he paused, thinking. Then he looked back at Draco. "But they could also be some other group of people."

Draco groaned. After being kidnapped and left waiting for hours, then embarrassing himself in front of his one and only school-time enemy, he wasn't in the best mood. "_Must_ you attempt to work out who kidnapped us?" he sneered. "Can't we just say, 'we've been kidnapped; lets get the hell out of here'?"

Harry looked at him, distrust and defiance evident in his eyes. "If we work out who kidnapped us; we know what we're up against. All we know about them is that they took us and they can use wandless magic." Simply, but coldly.

Draco sniffed. Harry was right after all; Draco had just been too embarrassed (and thus, argumentative) to really notice what he was saying. Mercifully, Harry saw and understood Draco's silent agreement and continued on with trying to work out the identity of their captors.

"I think they actually might be some other group of people; one that we haven't heard of before… if they were Death Eaters… they wouldn't have minded at all hurting us when they kidnapped us… but they didn't hurt us at all. Well… they didn't hurt me at least. The only thing they did was take some blood from my finger and use a wandless disarming charm on me. What about you?"

"No, they did the same to me. A disarming charm and some blood. They didn't hurt me. I sure as hell hurt them though! They used the blood to create a clone of me." Draco shuddered at the memory.

"Same." Harry said quietly, the memory's of both that and the graveyard coming back to him.

Draco frowned and looked at Harry. Something in Harry's voice suggested he was thinking of something other than the kidnapping. Oh well. He'd look into it later. _Wait, what? No. As soon as I am out of here, Potter and I split; I'll have no time to 'look into it.' We're only sticking together now because we have a better chance of escape together rather than separate. After this there's no more truce._

"Right," He said gruffly, attempting to bring Harry back to the present. "So we know that they can do wandless magic, they wanted both you and me for what ever reasons, they didn't want anyone to know we're missing and they have a bloody huge fortress. We were running for ages. It doesn't look like we're anywhere nearer to getting outside. That's not much to go on."

"We could be lost." Harry pointed out, ever so helpfully.

"I don't even want to think about that." Draco said shortly. "Right, I say we rest a few more minutes, then leave. My breath isn't quite back yet and we can't stay in one place too long; It'll increase our chances of discovery."

"I agree. I say we take it a bit slower this time; we'll have more luck not getting lost if we take notice of where we're going."

Whatever Draco would have replied with was never heard, because at that moment a head popped around the edge of the statue. Both boys' eyes widened in horror.

"I'VE FOUND THE –" The man's announcement was suddenly cut short as a fist connected with his forehead.

"Time to go!" Draco said, massaging his hand slightly as he stepped over the unconscious body of their discoverer. "Sheesh! That guy's forehead is like a bloody rock! You better have appreciated that Potter! That hurt!"

Harry ignored Draco as he stepped out from behind the statue, looking down both lengths of the corridor, listening. Fairly soon, noises were heard from the further end.

Without a word, both boys took off in the opposite direction to the noises. They had nearly made it to the corner when their pursuers rounded the other end. At the shout of "There they are!" from one of the many behind them, their pace increased dramatically.

Pretty soon, the two teens were, just as they had been before, running so fast that they could barely see where they were going.

So much for take it slow.

Fortunately however, both of the fleeing teenagers were seekers, which meant that they had incredibly good eye sight. Suddenly, both teens hurtled to a stop, span on the spot, ran a few paces backwards, and ran through a door.

A door which led them straight to the outside.

Then, just as suddenly as they had turned around, both boys skidded to a stop yet again.

"Uh oh…" Harry said. That hardly summed the situation up. Harry and Draco had both thought that, once they got outside, they would be pretty much free. They had imagined that there would be a forest or a woodland or something of the like surrounding the fort that they could disappear into, much like the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts.

What they hadn't expected was to run out onto a wide expanse of green grass, hemmed by a cliff. Beyond the edge of the cliff, they could see the white caps of waves. They could see no shoreline in the distance.

"We're on an island…" Draco whispered, disbelievingly. "We're on a freaking island! How the hell are we supposed to escape if we're on a freaking island!?"

"Er… swim?" Came Harry's slightly timid response.

"Oh yes, swim." Draco spat sarcastically. "Let's just hurl ourselves off the edge of a cliff, which most likely has sharp pointy rocks at the bottom, and swim, assuming of course that our backs aren't broken by the time we hit the water, to the shore that we can't even see. Brilliant plan."

Harry looked over his shoulder to the door they had just come through. Beyond it, and growing louder, were the sounds of pursuit.

"Well, personally I don't want to find out what these people want with me. You feel free to stay of course." Harry said, before taking off and running towards the cliff.

Draco watched him go, truly torn. He could stay and get captured, then get punished for refusing the Dark Lord, punished again for trying to escape, and probably end up dead… or he could follow Potter's (insane) example and run off the edge of a cliff, hope that he landed safely, hope that there weren't any sharks in the probably freezing water and hope that he either made it to shore or that he got picked up by some (friendly) fishermen.

It only took him a second to decide. He took off after Harry.

He had caught up with Harry and the two of them were about three quarters of the way to their destination (_and probably death_) when they heard the unmistakeable sounds of a door banging open behind them, followed by the unmistakeable sounds of a large number of pursuers.

The boys picked up their pace as spells started flying over their heads.

But they were tired, and they weren't running as they had been originally and their pursuers started gaining on them. Draco was hit by a tripping hex.

Against his better judgement, Harry spun around and grasped Draco's arm (much to the latter's surprise), hauling him to his feet and narrowly ducking a curse of some description.

Finally, after what seemed like an age, they reached the edge of the cliff. Much like when Harry had prepared to leap out his bedroom window, there was no hesitation from either teen as they each threw themselves over the edge.

Finally. No more curses whistling over head. No more thudding beneath their feet. No more panic in their hearts. Both were where they loved to be the most; in the air.

The fact that they were falling (possibly to their doom) had been momentarily forgotten.

They were about half way down, with the foamy water rushing up to meet them, when Draco suddenly yelped loudly in pain.

Before Harry had a chance to ponder what had happened, he too yelped in pain and jerked forwards as what felt like a rope caught him around the middle, bringing his fall to freedom to a sudden, painful halt.

All of the air in his lungs left in a whoosh and left him simultaneously trying to get oxygen into his lungs and trying not to breathe, because he found out quickly that breathing hurt.

A lot.

As he was trying to find some balance between breathing and not breathing, he didn't realise that he was being quickly hauled back up to the top of the cliff.

Apparently one of the bastards on the cliff top had cast a charm that caused a rope to wrap around his middle, allowing him to be pulled back to where he was trying to escape from. Judging by the gasping and spluttering coming from beside him that was similar to his own, he assumed that the same thing had happened to Draco.

A few moments later, Harry and Draco were pulled over top of the cliff.

If they could have, they would have gotten up and run again. But neither of them could move much at all.

Harry's vision was blurred, and he could barely see anything. The pain in his stomach was causing black spots to appear in front of his eyes. The pain was so intense it felt like Cruciatus curse had been placed only on his stomach. It felt like someone had smashed him repeatedly with a spiky club.

"You idiot!" Someone out of his range of vision cried. "What the hell did you do that for!? Someone call Melena! We have to get these two healed!"

Harry felt a hand lay itself on his head, and he struggled weakly to get away. "Who's gone to get Melena?" The voice that had spoken before but now sounded a lot closer said. Harry supposed that the voice and the hand belonged to the same person.

Another voice answered, but Harry didn't hear what it said. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then opened them. His vision was clear for a moment. He saw Draco lying a couple of metres away; his eyes tightly closed, an expression of pain on his face and his hands wrapped around his stomach. There were many pairs of legs behind Draco, confirming Harry's suspicion that they were surrounded. Then his vision blurred again. Now it was even worse than before.

Suddenly, he coughed harshly. The action sent jagged bolts of pain through his stomach, making him gasp, which in turn made him cough even more. In dim, detached horror, Harry tasted metal in his mouth.

Raising a hand gingerly, he touched the wet substance in the corner of his mouth, then brought his hand up so that he could see it. He had been right. Blood. He brought his hand back down to cradle his stomach, whimpering as another bolt of pain ripped through him.

The hand on his head tightened a fraction.

"Melena won't get here in time, Ronan; you'll have to try to heal them… even if just a little bit!" A new voice joined the surrounding noise, a panicked edge to it.

Ronan didn't respond for a moment and the hand on Harry's head clenched slightly. "Ok." Ronan agreed. "Help me turn them over. I need to see their stomachs clearly. We'll start with Harry." Ronan bant down and spoke in Harry's ear. "You've been injured. We're going to try and help you. It will hurt, so be prepared, but don't fight us. We don't want to hurt you." Ronan paused, before adding, a slight hint of amusement noticeable, "Nelathor was right. You are reckless."

The hand moved from Harry's head and went to his shoulder. By this time, his brain had stopped processing anything other primal thoughts.

Another hand joined the one on his shoulder; this time on his hip. A couple more people came forward to help too.

"Ok," Ronan said. "On the count of three. One… Two… Three!"

Harry screamed in agony as he was turned over onto his back, and he immediately attempted to curl into a ball, but hands on his shoulders stopped him. He coughed again, and he felt more blood land on his tongue.

A fringe of blackness invaded Harry's vision as he coughed and struggled weakly against his captors. One of them was saying comforting words into his ear, but he could not hear them. He felt a pair of hands on his stomach.

A comfortable warmth started spreading through his stomach, but Harry was too far gone by this point to notice.

It was with relief that Harry slid into the blackness that had been fringing his vision and he fell, unaware of anymore noise or pain, into blissful unconsciousness.

OoO

**AN: Phew! Talk about a long chapter!! Sixteen pages:Shocked: **

**Hehe, I enjoyed writing this chapter! I have had that 'escape' scene running around in my head for ages, so it's good to finally get it on paper! (Or screen… whichever…)**

**TRANSLATIONS:**

**(1) Shenalar lea – Emerald Child**

**Aaaaaand… That's all. I know it gets frustrating when you are reading a story and there are whole conversations in different languages, so I try to keep it to a minimum while still having some to give more oomph to the chapter. Get me? Oh well.**

**Hope you enjoyed! Please review! (Whether you liked it or not! ;p) I only write this for you people, and if I don't get reviews, I don't know if there's any point in my continuing. **

**Thank you!!!**

**Lots of love, Bundi.**


	3. The Lost Elves

**AN: WHAT AN ABSOLUTELY AWESOME END TO THE SERIES!!! Don't worry, I'm not going to spoil anything, but who else thought that the Deathly Hallows was an absolutely BRILLIANT end to the wonderful series of Harry Potter? I DID! I think the last book did justice to the other six books, and made all the emotional effort we all put into the series TOTALLY worth it. GREAT WORK JK! (Although… If you're reading this… I could have hit you several times while I was reading. WHY DID YOU DO IT???)**

**NOTE! In this story, Voldemort's eyes were originally brown, and then turned red when he turned twenty. I don't care if that's what was in the book or not (to be honest I can't remember what colour they were when he was still Tom) but that's how it is in my FanFiction.**

**This chap has a LOT of back history, so for those of you who don't like history…be warned! ;p Also, despite what some of you may think, I wrote this BEFORE Deathly Hallows came out, so I didn't get any ideas from there.**

**Right, let's get down to business! **_**The Lost Elves;**_** chapter three of **_**An Caillte Fien**_**:Cheer:Cheer!: **

**Enjoy!**

_**The Lost Elves**_

He couldn't see anything. Well, unless you count the pressing blackness surrounding him as 'something.'

Harry turned around, squinting; trying to see past the dark. Nope. Nothing. What on earth had those people done to him? It was like he was dreaming a vivid dream… only, it was a vivid dream of nothing.

Harry sighed angrily. The blackness pressing on his eyes was starting to get irritating.

Finally, something caught his eye. There! Right above his head! There was a tiny speck of light; growing rapidly larger.

Not thinking that it was perhaps not the best thing to do in the circumstances, Harry reached out a hand, trying to catch the speck of light.

_Hm…maybe it's a bit further away than I thought._

He jumped up, trying to reach the light, but again, it was out of his reach.

_That thing could be light-years away from me and I wouldn't be able to tell because of this dratted dark._

The light had stopped growing. It was now about the size of Harry's palm. Then, from inside the light, three shadows grew.

Harry squinted at the shadows, attempting to define them. The shadows finally stepped out of the light, and started coming towards him.

Eventually the shadows were close enough to be seen as humans. Who they were however, Harry still could not see.

_Right, so the light _was _ages away from me. Lucky I didn't walk towards it. I would have been walking for forever._

Suddenly, the person leading the group of three came into focus. Harry nearly died.

"Sirius!?"

Then the two people behind Sirius also came into view.

"Mum? Dad?"

_Ok, that's it. Those people killed me. I'm dead. I've died. And this… this must be limbo. Someone's about to decide whether I go to Heaven or Hell. Those people bloody killed me, and no one's going to know I've died because of that D'arvitting clone they placed in my stead. Wait… D'arvitting? What the hell is D'arvitting?_

"Hey Harry. How you doing?" Sirius asked, a lopsided grin lighting his face. His face… it looked younger… it was the same face that Harry had seen so many times in the photo of his parents wedding. The years spent in Azkaban had disappeared. Death, as odd as it sounded, had rejuvenated Padfoot.

There had been so many things Harry had wanted to say to Sirius since he had fallen through the veil in the Department of Mysteries, and millions of things he had wanted to say to his parents, but now that he had the chance, none of those things came out.

Instead, he looked at Sirius and his parents in horror. "I can't die yet!"

Years later, Harry would look back on that moment and cringe.

Sirius smiled gently. "You aren't dead yet, kiddo."

Harry looked at him, bewildered. "But you are! And I'm seeing you right now! I must be dead if I can see you."

"You know," Lily said, looking at her son fondly, "James pulls that exact same expression when he hasn't got a clue what's going on."

"Hey!" James complained, casting an injured glance at his wife.

Lily stepped forward and placed her hand gently on Harry's shoulder. "You aren't dead," she said softly. "You're just in a sort of… limbo at the moment."

_Ok, so I was right about the limbo thing, wrong about the dead thing. Huh._

"Limbo? How can I be in limbo if I'm not dead?"

James took over. "You're currently recovering from a rather nasty injury, and while you're out cold, Lily, Sirius and I asked The Boss if we could take some time out and come and explain some things to you."

"By the way," Sirius said, a smile on his face, "nice escape! Well… nice nearly escape anyway. I didn't know you could run so fast! Maybe you should join a track team as well as play Quidditch!"

Harry looked at Sirius dryly. "I don't really remember attempting to escape. I was too busy trying to deal with the total panic I was experiencing."

"Yes, about that," Lily started, a frown creasing her forehead, "they really made a mess of that. What they should have done was come and explain the situation to you and the Malfoy boy, as opposed to kidnapping you and scaring you half to death! Not to mention injuring you! How they are ever going to gain your trust now I don't know."

"Gain my trust? Wait, wait! Those people who kidnapped me want my trust? Hah, not likely! They nearly killed me!"

Lily's frown deepened. "Like I said, they handled it very badly. But it wasn't meant to happen like that. The man who was in charge of fetching you and the Malfoy boy didn't think you'd agree to come, so he decided to 'save time'. Foolish man. The others weren't kidnapped though. The people in charge of _their_ collections didn't make such a mess of it."

Harry was getting more bewildered by the minute. "What on earth are you talking about? The others? What others? How many of us are they collecting? And what the heck for?"

"Hang on!" Sirius said, holding up a hand. "Before we go into all the details, I at least want a hug from my Godson."

"What……?" It took Harry a few moments to process what Sirius had just said; he had been so caught up in attempting to work out what was going on that he had quite forgotten the fact that he had been wishing to see both Sirius and his parents for quite some time.

Once everything caught up with him however, he launched himself at Sirius, who yelped in surprise at the sudden attack.

"AAAGH! SIRIUS! Oh my gosh, I'm so glad to see you!! I've missed you so much! I have heaps to tell you! About the prophecy and everything that happened after you – YOU BLOODY IDIOT! HOW COULD YOU TORMENT LESTRANGE LIKE THAT YOU _**FOOL**_! DEATH EATERS FIGHT BETTER WHEN THEY'RE ANGRY! IF YOU WERENT ALREADY DEAD, I'D KILL YOU! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW I FELT!? YOU BLOODY, **BLOODY** IDIOT!"

By the end of Harry's tirade, he was grasping Sirius's shoulders and shaking him fiercely.

"He has a point you know," James said casually.

Harry gasped slightly and let go of Sirius, turning around slowly. He had forgotten all about his parents. "Dad? Mum?"

James smiled. "We were wondering when you'd notice us."

Harry stood still, totally speechless. Taking advantage of her son's silence, Lily stepped forward and grasped Harry tightly in a bone crushing hug.

"I have waited fifteen years to do that to you," she whispered softly to him.

After a pause, Harry returned the embrace fiercely. He buried his face into her neck and breathed in her scent. He remembered that smell now. He hadn't smelt it in so long.

Lily held on to her son for a long time, and when she finally stepped back, both she and Harry had tears in their eyes.

"Ok, it's my turn now," James said, stepping forward and wrapping her arms around Harry, who in hugged him in return.

"What's going on?" Harry asked, stepping back from the embrace after a while and wiping his eyes.

"You were kidnapped."

Harry and James turned to Sirius and said, simultaneously, with sarcasm so thick it was almost palpable, "Really?"

"Er… well… I was just clarifying… you know…"

Harry and James rolled their eyes, and then James said, "Those people kidnapped you because they want to train you to reach your full potential."

"And they couldn't just ask me?" Harry replied cynically.

"Well, Nelathor didn't think you'd agree to come, but that's just him. As I said, he and the other Tourniquets – I'll explain later – want to train you – and there are six other people too – so that you reach your full potential and defeat Voldemort. And let me tell you; your full potential is quite high."

Harry looked at his father. "What do you mean? Why do they only want seven of us? If they want to train people to defeat Voldemort, then wouldn't it be better if they trained more of us?"

"Ah, but Harry," Sirius said, "You're thinking that they want to train normal people. You are not normal."

Harry sighed. Why was it always _him _that was different? "Great."

"You aren't aware of this Harry, but I wasn't actually a muggle," Lily said.

Harry looked at his mother, totally bewildered. "What?"

"No one knew. I didn't even know. I only found out after I'd died," Lily took a deep breath before taking the plunge. "Hundreds of years ago, there was a race of people called the Nencré Fien, or the People, who were separated into eight Mendrini's, or tribes. Diamond, Emerald, Lapis Lazuli, Opal, Topaz, Ruby, Amethyst and Sapphire.

"They were a great race and each tribe had a King or Queen who ruled them, and the Kings and Queens together made the Council that ruled the whole kingdom. But eventually, as always seems to happen, one of the Mendrini's King's – The Ruby King – decided that he wanted more power."

"I know this sounds like the start of a really cliché fairy tale Harry," Sirius said, "but believe every word of it."

Lily continued. "The Ruby King wanted his Mendrini to be the only one, so he spread rumours and lies that one of the other Council members wanted to rule the whole Kingdom for themselves. He told the Diamond that the Emerald wanted the sole throne, he told the Opal that the Topaz wanted the sole throne and so on, until none of the Council trusted each other.

"Then, when the rest of the kingdoms were at their weakest, he struck. None of them knew who it was that was the enemy until it was too late, and by then they couldn't call for help from any other Mendrini. One by one each of the Mendrini were wiped out, until the only Nencré Fien left were members of the Ruby Clan. The Ruby King was the king of the whole kingdom.

"But even then the King was not satisfied. He lived in constant fear, always thinking that someone was trying to subplot him. He started by killing his First Advisor. Then the Councillor. If he even heard of a whisper of dissent among his subjects, he had whole villages burnt to the ground.

"Finally, there were only a handful of People left, and the King realised that he had no one to back him up should someone challenge him. He decided that he would take a precaution to ensure that his line was not wiped out entirely should he die. He took his son; barely a year old, cast a charm on him so that he and his descendants would look the same as every other human, and gave him to a family of humans. What he didn't realise however, was that each of the other Royal Mendrini had done the exact same thing.

"Not long after he sent his son into the world of humans, the Ruby King was killed. The Ruby Mendrini lived on for a while, always changing Kings, until they eventually died out. They could have married humans, and members any other Mendrini would have, but the Ruby Clan refused to 'water down their blood.' They were obsessed with purity.

"None of them ever knew that there were eight Royal members of each Mendrini clan running around disguised as humans. So, apart from the eight disguised children, that whole race was wiped out. And all because one King wanted more power than all the rest.

"Fortunately however, there were some people who knew that there had been children hidden among the humans. They were the Tourniquets. They were the official protectors of the Royals."

"Official protectors?" Harry interrupted, his brow creased in a frown. "If they were the official protectors, then how come each of the Mend-whatever's were wiped out? How come the Tourni-whatsits didn't protect them?"

"Good question Harry." Lily said, smiling fondly at her son. "Because they were not told in time. They did not live with the Royals. They didn't even live on the same island as the Nencré Fien. They just had a few representatives in each territory; the rest of them lived somewhere else. The Ruby King made sure that the Tourniquets living with the People were the first he killed, so that the rest could not be alerted and the Royals would not have someone to assist them in their strategies. By the time word reached the Tourniquets who were living away, they barely had enough time to come up with some sort of plan.

"The Tourniquets were not protectors in the sense that they'd fight to protect someone; they were protectors in the sense that they ensured that their charge made the best possible decisions for themselves and, more importantly, for the kingdom. They specialised in things like medicine and protection spells as opposed to other magic, but could do other magic if needed. The Tourniquets also made sure that the Royal line would be continued.

"It was the Tourniquets who came up with the suggestion of sending a child to live with the humans to ensure its safety. If the parents survived the war, they could retrieve their son or daughter afterwards. If not, then the child would be rescued by the Tourniquets at the right time.

"Unfortunately however, the Royals each panicked and hid their youngest child with the humans as soon as possible, without telling the Tourniquets _who_ they had placed them with. Each parent died before the Tourniquets found out. After every last Mendrini was no more, the Tourniquets set about finding the Lost Children.

"After hundreds of years of searching, a few months ago they finally found the last Lost Child, including the Ruby Child, though they found him by pure accident. The Ruby Child has followed in the same footsteps as his ancestor. He is obsessed with the notion of purity, and is, at this very moment, in the process of trying to take over the world."

"Are you saying…?" Harry asked, his eyes widening as he realised.

"Yes, Harry," James said. "Voldemort is the Lost Ruby Child."

"…Right…" Harry said slowly, trying to digest it all.

Sirius took up the story. "The Tourniquets realised that no one would have a chance of stopping Voldemort, except for the other descendants of the Nencré Fien, so they decided to gather you all together and train you all, so that you are able to defeat Voldemort once and for all."

"All of us… wait; are you saying that _**I'm**_ one of these Lost Kids? And that Mum was one too, but no one ever knew?"

"Yes," James said simply.

"Merlin…" Harry breathed. Then he sighed in annoyance. "Why can't I just be normal?"

James frowned. "You are normal Harry…just… a different kind of normal to what humans are."

As the implications of this statement hit Harry, he staggered slightly. "Bloody Merlin! I'm not even human! I'm an alien! I'm not even… oh boy…" James stepped swiftly behind Harry and steadied him as he staggered again.

"Are you alright kiddo?" he asked.

"Oh, come on Prongs!" Sirius said bluntly, gesturing towards Harry's slightly crossed and unfocussed eyes. "Of course he's not 'alright.' He's just been told that he's not human. How do you think you'd go with that discovery?"

"Er… fair point…"

"Ah…" Harry said, regaining his composure slightly. "Ah… which one of these Lost Kids am I supposed to be?"

"Didn't Lily mention it?" James asked, relieved that Harry was steady again. "The Nencré Fien were divided into Mendrini by the colour of their eyes. They were all the colour of some sort of Gem; hence the titles of the different Mendrini. That's also what 'Nencré' means; it means Gemstone."

"And 'Fien?' What does that mean?"

"Er…" Sirius said slowly, "Considering how you dealt with discovering you weren't human, perhaps we should leave it to the Tourniquets to tell you what it means."

Harry decided to let that comment slide. "Er, ok then. So… I'm the last living descendant of the Emerald … Tribe?"

Lily chuckled. "Mendrini. Yes, you are."

"What about Voldemort's eye colour? They weren't red when he was still Tom Riddle."

"Ah, that," James said. "The Ruby Mendrini were different from the other Mendrini in a few ways; their need for power, their purity obsession, and their eye colour. Most Elves were born with their Mendrini's eye colour, but the members of the Ruby Mendrini only got red eyes when they turned twenty. No one knows why, that's just how it always was. They usually had brown eyes before then."

"I see…" Harry said.

James laughed and put a hand on Harry's shoulder. "Well I'm impressed! Because it took me a lot longer than its taken you to grasp the concept!"

Harry re-thought what James had said about eye colour. He yelped. "Wait – ELVES!? I'm an ELF!? An _**ELF**_!?"

Lily and Sirius simultaneously smacked James upside the head. He yelped under their attack.

Harry continued to rant, eyes widened slightly in panic. "HOW could no one have discovered a bunch of kids running around who aren't even HUMAN!? They discover twelve uses for Dragons blood, they learn how to make invisibility cloaks out of demiguise hair, they translate a bunch of runes from times where no one is still from…they even make lollies out of an insect! But they miss the fact that there are several people from a long thought EXTICT RACE RUNNING AROUND THEIR ANKLES!? HOW ON EARTH DID THEY MANAGE THAT!?"

"I suppose, in the same way muggles learnt how to harness electricity from various sources, but completely missed the fact that there's a whole Magical Community under their noses," Lily said, trying to calm her nearly hysterical son down.

"_**ELVES**_!?" Harry seemed nearly beyond vocalisation.

"Yes, Harry, Elves," James said. "That's what 'Fien' means. An Nencré Fien. The Gemstone Elves."

"Bleeding mother of Merlin… I think I might need to sit down," Harry muttered, landing with a soft thump on the ground and bringing his hand up to his forehead in an effort to stop his head spinning.

There was silence while Harry digested this information.

"If it helps," Lily said softly, "I fainted when I found out."

James and Sirius raised their eyebrows simultaneously. "Yeah, I'm sure that helps him," they said sarcastically.

"Actually… it helps," Harry said faintly from the ground.

James and Sirius frowned in confusion while Lily smiled smugly at them.

Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, fragments of a rather muffled voice came, sounding like words off a scratched CD, "They should both be... Get Betiltha to start… that they can eat when… up." The voice sounded to be coming from a long way off.

Harry looked up at his parents and Sirius. "What was that?"

James and Sirius looked at each other blankly. Lily frowned and asked "What was what?"

"Someone just said something. It was all broken up though. I only heard bits of what they said. What was it?"

"Ah, that would have been the healer, talking about you and the Malfoy boy. You must be getting close to waking up if you can hear what they're saying."

"What?" Harry yelped, jumping to his feet. "I can't wake up yet! I don't understand everything!"

Sirius smiled ruefully. "Since when do any of us ever understand everything?"

"But…" Harry continued, his voice quiet, "but I don't want to leave you."

Lily made a noise of comfort as she stepped forward and enveloped him in only the second hug he could remember receiving from her. "You've got to go back for now Harry," she whispered. "But we'll always be with you. We always have been with you. You saw that when you were in the Tournament two years ago."

"We're so proud of you Harry," James said. "I don't know if I would ever have been able to go through all the stuff that you have."

Harry sniffed softly.

Lily drew back, her own eyes full of tears, and cupped Harry's face in her hands. "We love you Harry. Me and James and Sirius. We'll never leave you."

Harry nodded, trying to blink back tears. As he did, he heard noises that he now knew were coming from the real world. They were sounding closer.

Lily let go of him, and James stepped forward. He was the exact same height as Harry. His messy hair even stuck out at the same places Harry's did. Pulling Harry into a strong hug, he said, "We've missed you. This has been great; being able to finally talk to you. We could see… but we could never interact. You've done brilliantly."

The voices and sounds from the 'Real World' were getting louder. James must have sensed that there wasn't much time until Harry woke up, because he stepped back to let Padfoot have a turn.

Harry was the one to step forward this time. "I'm sorry Sirius," he whispered into Sirius's chest.

"What for?" Sirius asked, genuinely surprised.

"If I hadn't gone to the Ministry that day – if I'd payed more attention to occlumency – then you wouldn't have had to come… you wouldn't have gone through the veil."

Sirius smiled sadly, squeezing Harry tighter. "It's not your fault. Occlumency is hard. You need more than a year to get the hang of it. I didn't _need_ to come; I knew you would be fine with the other Order members there; I was just tired of being cooped up."

"But – "

"No buts. It was not your fault. I feel very flattered – even though it was a _really_ stupid thing to do, going to find Voldemort – that you were willing to do that just to save me. Besides; the only things I miss about being alive is you and Moony. Lets face it, my life the last few years hasn't exactly been a riot."

"But – "

"What did I say about buts? Listen," Sirius stepped out of the embrace and knelt on the floor in front of Harry, holding on to his upper arms, "you have a great life to go back to. Sure; the next few months will be hard what with all the training you are going to be doing, but when you get back to Hogwarts, you've got Ron, Hermione, Neville, Remus – a little bird told me he's been re-hired as the DADA teacher – Quidditch, everything! And let's not forget Ginny."

Harry looked at him blankly.

"Oh, come on," Sirius said, his 'I-just-thought-of-an-awesome-prank' grin on his face. "Don't try and act all innocent, I saw how you were looking at her."

"When?"

"All this last year! Don't pretend you haven't been."

"Looking at Ginny?"

"Yes looking at – you can't tell me you haven't… Eugg. You must have inherited that from Lily."

"Hey!" Lily cried, indignant.

"Inherited what?" Harry asked, totally lost.

"She didn't realise until Seventh Year." James said, a smug smirk on her face.

"Yeah, that's what you think! How do you know I wasn't just acting?" Lily retorted, pulling a face at James.

"Huh?" Harry asked.

Lily smiled. "There's that expression again."

"You are so cute when you are lost." Sirius teased, ruffling his confused Godson's already messy hair.

"You'll work it out eventually Harry." Lily said, smiling warmly.

"Hey guys, I don't think Harry has much time left."

"You're right." Lily said. "Harry, when you wake up, you probably won't remember this whole conversation at first. It'll come back to you after a while, but you wont remember it when you first wake up."

Harry opened his mouth to ask why he wouldn't remember, but his parents and Sirius were fading away. "Hey – You're all fading!"

Sirius smiled sadly. "You are too Kiddo. You're waking up."

"Wait – I don't want to yet!"

"We love you Harry. Remember that." Lily said. Her voice sounded further away already.

"Go get those bastards Harry." Sirius called to him. The three of them were barely visible they were so faded.

"But stay safe!" James said, with a reproachful glance at Sirius.

"Wait!" Harry called, desperate to get one last message across to them before he woke up. "I love you! All of you."

The three of them smiled, and then they were gone, and Harry was left alone in the darkness.

OoO

**AN: Bloody hell that was hard! Sorry for the seriously heavy history lesson guys – but you all needed to know it all. :)**

**Also – Just so I don't get in trouble – I had the idea of Royal Protectors, but I got the name 'tourniquets' from a FanFic I read somewhere on this site. I don't remember the name at the moment, but its on my fav's list, its about three (long) chapters long so far, and its REALLY good. Go read it. :)**

**And yes, this IS going to be a Harry/Ginny fic, but it wont be for a while, and there wont be too much of it. Enough to keep the Harry/Ginny fans happy, but not too much for the non Harry/Ginny fans to be able to handle. :)**

**Now, REVIEW! Feel free to tell me off for the wait, but also try to say something about the story, k? Cheers. :)**

**Love you all guys. Hopefully not **_**nearly**_** so long a wait til the next chapter. :)**

**Love Bundi.**


	4. Bonded by Trauma

**Disclaimer****: See chapter one, and leave me alone. Though I must say, the inspiration for the title comes from Artemis Fowl:**

_Artemis_: _If we survive this, we'll be friends. It will be unavoidable. Bonded by trauma. I've read about that happening before._

_Holly: We already are friends Artemis. You just don't remember._

**So yeah. :) Go read Artemis Fowl. They're great books. :Nods enthusiastically: I'm looking forward to the next one! D**

**WARNING****! This chapter contains a fair bit of swearing on behalf of Draco and Harry. Don't say I didn't warn you!**

**AN****: A (very) belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all! I apologise for the horrendous delay in all my stories; family reunions, no internet access, the fact that my Mum HATES it when I 'waste time on fake Harry Potter stories' and won't let me on FF, and a super case of writers' block all contributed to the delay. **

**That and I'm starting my first ever full time job TOMORROW and have been REALLY stressed out about it. I went back home to Melbourne and my family for the Christmas holidays, but I've come back to Sydney to start work. :Sigh: How fun. Thanks to all of you who wished me luck for that by the way. :) I really appreciated it.**

**So yeah, enough of my babbling. Though really, you should all be used to it by now. If they have a 'Longest AN Award,' I think I might be in the running. :Grin:**

_**Bonded by Trauma**_

"Potter!"

Harry groaned quietly at the sound of the voice, waking slowly, and becoming acutely aware of a throbbing pain in his stomach.

He curled slightly into a ball in a weak attempt to protect his stomach from further harm. What on earth had happened to him to make his stomach hurt so much?

"Potter! Answer me!"

And who was that voice? It sounded familiar.

"For Merlins sake Potter! I know you're awake! Get up already!"

_Ok… I definitely know that voice. Malfoy? Why on earth is Malfoy trying to wake me up? Wait…_

Suddenly, all at once, his mad, briefly lived adventure came back to him – the men in his room, the clone, his attempted escape with Malfoy and their re-capture from half way down the cliff.

As soon as these memories hit him, he leapt out the bed he was lying in in a panic, knocking Malfoy (who was standing next to the bed Harry was in) over in his rush.

"Where are we?" he asked Malfoy (who was now picking himself up off the floor, a scowl placed firmly on his face) in a slightly panicky voice. Looking down at his stomach, which was hurting more now thanks to his sudden movement, he saw that it was bound firmly in a kind of pressure bandage. Looking up, he saw Malfoy had the same thing around his stomach too.

"You took your bloody time to answer me!" Malfoy replied grumpily. "I've only been trying to wake you up for the past five minutes." He went on to answer Harry's question, still in a grumpy tone of voice. "I don't know much better than you do where we are, but I _assume_ that we are in the same place we were before, and I know that there were people here about six minutes ago, and that they'll probably be back fairly soon. So we better move fast if we're going to get out of here."

"There were people here before? How do you know?"

"They thought I was still out cold," Malfoy replied, the ghost of a proud grin flitting across his lips.

"Right," said Harry, quickly spotting the door and heading over to it.

"You don't think I haven't already tried it?" Malfoy drawled, rolling his eyes. "It's locked. The only way I can see out of here is that window up there. That's why I woke you up. I won't be able to get out there by myself without my wand. It's too high up."

Harry looked at the window Malfoy had mentioned. It was sitting slightly open, and was rather highly set in the wall, and they would only be able to fit out if they stood on something, one gave a boost to the other and then the one through the window pulled the other one through too. Fortunately, from what Harry could see, the window looked to have a wide ledge, so there shouldn't be too many issues when it came to pulling the second person through.

Harry looked quickly around the room, looking for something they could stand on, and did a slight double take, frowning. The room did not look like the type of room one would normally keep prisoners in. It was well lit and had rows of beds which were all dressed in white linen. It looked rather like the Hospital Wing at Hogwarts.

"Potter!" Malfoy's voice broke Harry out of his musings. Looking over, he saw Malfoy standing at the end of a small but heavy looking desk made of what looked like cedar and intricately carved.

It wasn't perfect – it was going to be difficult for them both to stand on it at the same time it was that small – but it looked like the best option, so Harry hurried over.

Grasping the other end of the desk, he lifted it up with Malfoy. It wasn't as heavy as it looked, but it still forced Harry's stomach muscles to work, and he gasped with the sudden pang of pain that shot through him. Malfoy appeared to be experiencing the same sort of pain, judging by his narrowed eyes, scowl and slightly red face, but, as he didn't say anything, neither did Harry, and the two of them struggled with the desk over to the window.

Once it was in place, they both jumped lightly up onto the top of it, struggled for a moment with the limited space and unavoidable closeness to each other, then finally both settled, balanced and with as much personal space each as could be achieved.

"Ok," Harry said, eyeing the window as he thought out their next move, "I'll give you a boost, then once you're up, reach down again and help me get through."

Malfoy glanced at him. "You're pretty quick to trust. You don't think that I might just take off once you've helped me through the window? I am a Slytherin after-all."

Harry paused and frowned. "No…" he said slowly. "I hadn't actually thought of that."

Malfoy scoffed. "Gryffindors. Well I have thought of the possibility. And I also decided that I probably would do that, which is why I'm going to be the one doing the boosting."

Harry's frown deepened. That didn't sound like Malfoy at all. It almost sounded as if he wanted both of them to get out of there, but didn't trust himself not to bolt at the first sign of trouble. Most un-Malfoy-like.

But Harry wasn't going to argue. He was about to agree when he saw Malfoy's eyes widen.

"Hurry!" Malfoy said urgently, holding his hands out for Harry to use as a launching pad. "There's someone coming!"

Glancing towards the door, Harry heard the unmistakeable sounds of people coming down the corridor beyond their room towards them.

Without losing a second, Harry grabbed Malfoy's shoulders to steady himself, placed a foot in Malfoy's cupped hands and pushed himself up.

"Hurry!" Malfoy said again as Harry grabbed the edge of the slightly open window, which was now at the same height as his head, and started trying to pull it more open.

"Its…stuck!" Harry gasped as he tugged madly.

"What!? Pull harder then!"

"Oh, you don't think I'm not trying that!?"

"Hurry up!"

"I am! It's not moving!"

"Pull harder!"

"It's not working!"

"We've got hardly any more time left Potter! Hurry up! Get the damn thing open!"

"I'm trying!"

"What on earth are you doing!?" a shrill voice cried from behind them. Both Harry and Malfoy gasped and looked around. There was a portly woman standing in the doorway with a mortified expression on her face. There were several other men and women each wearing similar expressions standing behind her.

"Get down from there immediately!" the portly woman cried. "You are both meant to be resting!"

Harry and Malfoy stayed as they were, frozen, mouths and eyes open in shock and horror at their discovery.

"I told you to get down!" the woman snapped crossly, and after a wave of her hand, the window Harry and Malfoy had been attempting to escape from snapped shut.

Harry yelped in surprise and fell backwards, which caused Malfoy to lose his footing too, and they both fell backwards off the small desk, landing with a heavy crash on the floor.

Within moments however, they were back on their feet and – both no longer staring in shock, but rather, glaring fiercely at the new arrivals – they moved together and backwards so that their backs were pressed against the wall.

"Who the hell are you people?" Malfoy snarled fiercely.

"And what do you want with us?" Harry added, just as angrily.

Harry and Malfoy looked, felt like and were acting for all the world like animals trapped in the corner of a cage, with hunters standing in front of their only possible avenue of escape.

Subconsciously, they both dropped their heads a little lower with their jaws thrust out defiantly and moved their shoulders slightly back and up in the same sort of position a dog would move into if it were raising its hackles. They looked ready to attack.

The woman standing in the doorway seemed to realise that the boys were very close to losing it and making another mad dash for freedom, because she turned quickly to the people behind her and said something to them that Harry and Malfoy couldn't hear, but which caused one of the company to turn and run down the hall, and then she walked forwards a few small steps (which caused Harry and Draco to press further into the wall) and spoke very gently.

"My name is Melena. I am the Head Healer here. I have been looking after you since you were injured." She paused, waiting for either one of the boys to say something. When they simply continued to glare fiercely at her, she continued.

"You were injured rather badly when you were pulled back from over the cliff. The rope that was used to stop your fall put a lot of sudden pressure on your stomachs. The fact that there was such pressure concentrated on such a small area meant that there was some serious damage.

"I won't go into too much detail, for you are on the mend now, and exactly what your injuries were does not matter. I got there not long after Ronan had healed you both a little, but by then you were both unconscious. I did a bit more healing there, but we then brought you back here – to our Healing Rooms – where you have both spent the past three days recovering."

Melena paused again, giving Harry and Draco another chance to speak. They did not. Neither did they move from their place against the wall.

Melena sighed. There had been some serious damage done to these two – and she wasn't thinking in physical terms. It was going to take a lot to get them to be able to trust her and the others.

Not for the first time – and certainly not for the last either – Melena cursed Nelathor's foolish actions.

"I can see that you two are a little stressed at the moment," she said, trying to ease a little of their tension. "Is there anything I can do to make you feel more comfortable?"

Her question was met by a stony silence.

She sighed again. This was going to be very difficult.

"Maybe a familiar face will help them to relax a little," said a voice that Harry recognised as one of the three from his bedroom. A tall man stepped through the crowd of people at the door, and walked up to stand beside Melena.

Harry's and Draco's jaws dropped in shock. They both spoke simultaneously.

"Snape?"

"Professor?"

"Yes," Snape replied. "It's me. And I notice that only one of you referred to me in the correct manner," he added, a ghost of a smile crossing his face.

"W-what… what the hell is going on Professor?" Draco asked beseechingly, going to step forward slightly, but Harry grabbed his arm and yanked him – none too gently – back to the wall.

Draco made a noise of confusion as he was pulled back, and he looked confusedly at Harry, who neither answered nor even looked at him, but continued to glare – even more fiercely, if it was possible – at Snape.

"Surely you know he's a Death Eater," Harry hissed quietly in Draco's ear. Draco had actually forgotten this small piece of information, but as soon as Harry mentioned it, his face hardened once more, and he glared defiantly again at Snape and the others in the doorway.

"That's a bloody good question," Harry said aloud, his eyes locked on Snape, and his hand still gripping Draco's arm, "and I'd like to know the answer to it too. But I think we'll stay where we are, and if any of you lot dares to come another step closer…" he let his threat trail off, in the hope that they would back off a bit, even though both parties knew there was nothing Harry could do if they did 'dare to come another step closer'.

But Snape surprised him. "Of course," he said, stepping back slightly to make Harry and Draco feel more comfortable. "Melena, perhaps you and the others should leave for now. It might be better for the time being if there were less people around." Melena nodded her head once, then turned and ushered the crowd of people out the door and down the corridor beyond.

The two teens certainly felt less trapped after the people had left, but with Snape still in the room they were still very much on the defensive.

Snape turned back to Harry and Draco. "My apologies. I did not mean to make you feel like you were cornered Harry, Draco."

Harry swelled angrily. "Who the _hell_ do you think you are!?" he exploded furiously. "You have _no right_ to call me by my first name! Don't you dare! Now, I want answers, and I want them now! Where the hell are we, who are you lot, and what the fuck do you want with us!?"

Snape silently berated himself for calling Harry by his first name. That had been a sure way to rial him, and to rial him well. "I'm sorry. I did not mean to offend."

"You seem to have 'not meant' to do a lot of things!" Draco spat. "Answer the damn questions!"

Snape sighed. He had known Nelathor's version of a pick up would cause more trouble for them all down the road. He decided to answer the questions quickly, before either Harry or Draco could get any more distressed or angry.

"You are currently in the Healing Rooms of Lerya Hall on the island of Yána," he stated.

Harry and Draco exchanged a mystified glance.

"And where, if you don't mind my asking, is this 'Yána'?" Draco asked, his voice icy and filled with fury and confusion.

"It is an island off the coast of Kennedy, Ireland. I do not expect you to have heard of it. Yána has been kept secret for thousands of years – ever since the Metya Elda Nilmë."

"What the hell does that mean!? Would you use some language that we can fucking-well understand!?" Draco burst out angrily.

Snape made an apologetic gesture. "I'm sorry. I keep forgetting that you do not know the language yet. The island of Yána has been kept a secret ever since the Great War when the Elven Kingdom was divided. We are the Tourniquets, and Yána is where we live."

"Elven Kingdom?" Harry questioned, anger clearly marring his voice. "Tourniquets!? Listen, I don't know what the _hell_ you're on, but I know I don't want any! I've barely understood a word you've said so far, and all you're doing is making me even more pissed off than I already am! For the last fucking time: who are you people – in English thanks! And what the hell do you want with us!?"

Snape frowned, confusion evident on his face. "I'm not sure I understand you," he said slowly. "Don't you know about the Elves? And the Tourniquets?"

Draco was losing his patience. "The only 'Elves' I know about are House Elves," he snapped, "and the only 'Tourniquets' I know about are a form of bandage! And I fail to see how the two correlate!"

Beside Draco, Harry was standing stock still as the terms Snape mentioned clicked with something inside his head, and he started to remember something. Like a dream he'd had… with his parents… and Sirius in it.

"But…" Snape was clearly confused, and had not noticed Harry's change in demeanour. "But…didn't you both, while you were recovering, didn't you both have someone come and explain everything to you?"

Draco sneered. "How could someone come and explain everything to me if I was unconscious!?"

"You fucking bastard," Harry whispered. Draco looked at Harry in confusion, thinking he was talking to him, but Harry was staring at Snape, and the fury in his eyes was so intense that it almost hurt to look at.

The terms 'elves' and 'tourniquets' had triggered in Harry the memory of his parents and Sirius coming and telling him about the Lost Elves, and, when Snape had said 'didn't someone come and explain everything to you?' Harry had immediately remembered the previous year's Occlumency lessons, and how Voldemort had planted a vision in his mind.

Very quickly, he jumped to the conclusion that Snape (or someone else) had manipulated his mind into thinking Sirius and his parents were there, and that he had talked to them. He had never before felt so furious.

Snape, for his part, was looking more bewildered than ever.

"You fucking, fucking arsehole," Harry whispered again.

"I don't…what? What are you talking about?" Snape asked, not nearly conveying his confusion.

"How dare you… how fucking dare you!" as Harry's voice rose in volume, there was a loud crack, and a chunk of plaster from the roof fell and landed with another loud thump mere centimetres from where Snape was standing, causing Snape to yelp in shock and jump backwards.

There were several more cracks which coincided with more bits of ceiling falling.

With a shock (and no little confusion as to what caused it) Snape realised that Harry's magic, as happened with younger witches and wizards before they learnt to control it, was lashing out furiously and rapidly getting out of control. It rarely happened once a child started attending school, but there had been occasions where, if sufficiently upset, angered or frightened, a person could lose control of their magic, and that became very dangerous for anyone in the vicinity.

There were loud thumps as Harry moved away from the wall, yelling at Snape and grabbing any items within his reach and hurling them at the confused man, who was now ducking both flying items and falling plaster as he backed hastily towards the door.

Snape had no clue what it was that had set Harry off, but he decided it would probably be best if he left.

Draco stood frozen against the wall, watching Harry in astonishment, and as he looked, he saw tears shimmering in Harry's fury filled eyes. Harry continued to rant, and his voice rose to a scream.

"YOU FUCKING BASTARD! IT WASN'T ENOUGH THAT YOU USED SIRIUS TO LURE ME TO THE MINISTRY LAST YEAR, AND HAD HIM KILLED BECAUSE OF IT, YOU THEN GO AND USE HIM AND MY PARENTS TO TRY AND CONVINCE ME TO TRUST YOU!? TO TRY AND CONVINCE ME THAT I'M ONE OF EIGHT REMAINING ELVES!?"

Draco gasped at this point as he too remembered that he had, while he'd been unconscious, talked to his Grandmother Malfoy about all that Harry was talking about. But he still didn't understand why Harry was suddenly so upset.

Harry continued to yell, beyond fury, at Snape as the Potions teacher started heading towards the door. "YOU FUCKING ARSEHOLE! I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU STOOPED SO LOW! HOW FUCKING DARE YOU! AND DON'T YOU TRY AND DISAPPEAR, YOU COWARD! I'M NOT NEARLY FINIISHED WITH YOU YET!"

As Snape backed hastily through the door and pulled it quickly shut behind him, Harry stormed forward in a rage and grasped the handle, but it was already locked. Harry whacked his fists against it in a fury, yelling through.

"YEAH, THAT'S RIGHT! PISS OFF AND DISAPPEAR WHEN THINGS GET A BIT HEATED! THAT'S ALL YOU EVER DO ISN'T IT? RUN AWAY, OFF TO VOLDEMORT! WELL THERE'S NO FUCKING USE IN RUNNING! YOU'LL HAVE TO DEAL WITH ME SOMETIME! YOU FUCKING GORMLESS, COWARDLY ARSEHOLE! COME BACK IN HERE!"

Draco thought it was time he stepped in. He didn't want the roof falling in on them, as was likely to happen if Harry's loose magic wasn't brought under control.

"Potter," he called. Harry either ignored him or didn't hear. Either way, he continued shouting fruitlessly through the door.

"Potter!" Draco tried again, a sharper edge to his voice.

Harry swung fiercely around to face him. "_What?_"

"There's no point shouting obscenities at a closed door. I highly doubt Snape's still there. You're just wasting energy, ruining a perfectly good roof, and giving me a headache."

"You think I give a fucking damn about any of those things!? Fuck off!"

"There's no reason to get angry with me," Draco said archly. "It's not like our current predicament is my fault."

"Not your fault huh?" Harry yelled, more because he felt like yelling than he was actually angry with Draco. "How do I know this whole thing isn't your fault!? How do I know you weren't in on this whole thing from the beginning!? How do I know you didn't plan it all!?"

"Yeah, because I'd really come up with a plan so crude as this if I wanted to capture you," Draco snapped back, his anger rising. "Why would I want to capture you in the first place? And why, in the event that I did feel compelled to do so, would I choose to get captured _with_ you? You think I _want_ to spend time with the bespectacled Gryffindor from hell?"

"You could be working with Voldemort!" Harry yelled, ignoring the comment about the 'bespectacled Gryffindor from hell' and the flinch from Draco as he said 'Voldemort.'

"I'm not working with that mad man!" Draco shouted, finally angry. "Get that into your head, damn you! I don't want anything to do with him! I never have!"

"What makes you think I'm going to believe you? For all I know you have weekly picnics with the guy, enjoying the company of and honing your Death Eater skills on some of his most recent captives!"

"I'd never kill an innocent person!" Draco cried, upset and offended at his apparent reputation. Did people really think he might be like that?

"Your dad seems to enjoy it." Harry snapped out spitefully.

"YOU THINK I LIKE THAT HE DOES!?" Draco screamed furiously, startling Harry. "YOU THINK I LIKE THE FACT THAT HE PRACTICALLY LIVES BY YOU-KNOW-WHO'S SIDE!? DO YOU THINK I LIKE THE FACT THAT WHENEVER HE _IS_ HOME, HE SPENDS THE WHOLE TIME BOASTING ABOUT THE RECENT 'VICTORY' HE OR ANOTHER DEATH EATER HAS HAD OVER AN INNOCENT, DEFENCELESS MUGGLE!? IT MAKES ME SICK! DO YOU THINK I LIKE THE FACT THAT MY OWN FATHER IS A BLOOD THIRSTY, WAR-MONGERING BEAST!? DO YOU THINK I LIKE THE FACT THAT I'M HIS SON!?"

Harry stood facing Draco, his eyes wide and jaw hanging slack, shocked beyond words. Draco was glaring at him, breathing hard after his explosion of emotion, seemingly waiting for Harry to respond.

"I…I…No," Harry stuttered finally. "I…I don't suppose I do…anymore. I mean I... well, I never really thought about it quite like…You always seemed so… But I suppose you wouldn't. No. Well… I wouldn't at least. I'm sorry," he finished finally, awkwardly.

Draco glared for a moment longer, then turned and headed back to the bed he'd woken up in earlier that day, muttering a sneered "Whatever" as he went.

He was feeling quite drained, he realised as he sat heavily down, his back to Harry. _That's what you get for expressing emotion I suppose_, he thought grumpily. _What the hell was I thinking? Spouting off like that to Potter of all people. That's the second time in as many days. I have to get a handle on this before it becomes a habit._

Harry walked uncertainly up behind Draco, feeling guilty about upsetting him and feeling immensely sorry for him. _The poor guy seems really conflicted,_ he thought. _And no wonder._

"Malfoy?" he asked tentatively. He moved around to sit on his own bed, which was the one next to Malfoy's.

"What?" Malfoy growled. He had a sneaking suspicion that he knew what was coming.

"I'm sorry."

_I was right,_ Draco thought. "For?" he asked, against his better judgement.

Harry shrugged. He had calmed down entirely from the earlier outburst prompted by Snape, and was now simply feeling tired and drained. Both emotionally and physically. "For everything you said just now."

Draco rolled his eyes, moving around and lying down, hands behind his head on his pillow. "I don't need you feeling sorry for me Potter. And besides; it's not like it's your fault."

"I know," Harry replied quietly. "But that doesn't stop me from being sorry about it."

Both boys were quiet. There was nothing that needed to be said. They seemed to have reached an understanding, vague as it was.

Draco would much have preferred to have reached nothing with Potter – much less an understanding, but he felt he was going to need an ally in the near future, and Potter was the best option. Never mind that Potter was the _only_ option.

Besides… he was still very curious about a few things, and it would be easier to find out about said things if he and Potter were temporarily on the same side.

"So…" Draco said, somewhat hesitantly to Harry, who was sitting against his headboard and wearing a pensive expression. "What was all that before?"

"All what?" Harry asked, completely absorbed in thoughts of a different matter entirely.

"With Snape."

Harry's head shot up, his eyes glinting dangerously. "Ah," he growled, angry once more. "That."

"Yeah, that. Why did you get so angry? You completely lost control. What caused it?"

Harry took a deep breath. "Whilst you were unconscious…did anyone you know – any relatives – come and visit you and tell you some cock and bull story about these long lost royal elves?"

"Yeah…" Draco replied slowly, unsure where this was headed. "My grandmother on my Father's side. She told me I was the… Diamond Elf or something. Why?"

"Well that whole thing was a false image, planted in your head by either Snape or Voldemort himself."

"What do you mean, 'planted'?"

"Have you heard of Occlumency?"

"Vaguely, yeah. Look Potter, I don't see where this is going."

Harry sighed impatiently. "Ok, listen. Occlumency is a way of protecting your mind against intruders."

Draco raised an eyebrow. "Intruders?" he repeated doubtfully.

Harry made a frustrated noise and rubbed the back of his neck. He was going to have to start from the _very _beginning. He didn't know exactly why he was telling what he was about to tell to Malfoy, but he figured it couldn't do any harm. Voldemort already knew anyway.

And he wanted to talk about it. He needed to talk about it. Hermione and Ron were great, there was no doubt about that. But he knew how they'd both react if he talked with them. He didn't feel like he could stand their pack patting and condolences, but he knew Draco wouldn't be doing any of that kind of thing. So he started talking.

"When Voldemort – oh get over it, it's just a name – attacked me the first time, I got my scar from his attempted killing curse. Now, I don't understand it completely – even Dumbledore doesn't – but when that happened, some sort of connection was created between my scar and him.

"In my first few years at Hogwarts, my scar would start to hurt if he was anywhere near me, but that was it, really. But after fourth year…" Harry hesitated slightly, hating having to remember that time. He took a breath and continued. "After fourth year, when he was back in his body… my scar started hurting more.

"It would hurt if Voldemort was really happy, if he was really angry, etcetera. Occasionally I would even see flashes of whatever it was that was making him happy, or angry, or whatever. I'd see what Voldemort was doing at the time.

"Last year, Dumbledore wanted me to stop seeing those snapshots. He wanted me trained so that I could close off the connection. He got Snape to teach me Occlumency. But it didn't work very well. I was no good at it. I couldn't get the hang of it. Snape quit, and I gave up.

"Then, Voldemort found out about the connection, and decided he could use it to his advantage. He started showing me this place at the Ministry – the Department of Mysteries – that he wanted to go, but couldn't. He thought if he made me curious enough about it, I would go, in which case he would have his Death Eaters waiting for me. But I didn't go."

Harry's voice was quiet, and he was staring unseeingly at the far wall as the prior year's events returned to him; fleshed themselves out in his mind's eye.

Draco was listening attentively, his eyes fixed on Harry's face. He had no clue where this was heading, nor what it had to do with the scene earlier with Snape, but he figured it would all make sense eventually. And even if it didn't, Draco didn't care much; this was bloody interesting.

Harry continued talking as though he was talking to himself, completely absorbed in memories, his voice filling with obvious grief as he went on.

"Then, in the middle of the History of Magic written exam, my scar suddenly hurt, and I saw a scene of what, I thought, Voldemort was doing at that moment.

"He was in the Department of Mysteries, at the place he'd been showing me the whole year. And he had Sirius."

_Sirius? Sirius Black?_ Draco thought confusedly. He wanted to ask Potter what Sirius Black had anything to do with, but had another question first. He could sense a 'but,' but it looked like Potter might need a bit of prompting. "But…?" he asked.

There was a pause, then Harry continued.

"But it wasn't real. The whole thing was a fake image, planted in my mind to make me go to the Department of Mysteries. Making me curious hadn't worked. But he knew for a fact that I would do anything, go anywhere to save Sirius if he were in trouble.

"So I went. Hermione, Ron and the others came with me. But we got there, and neither Sirius nor Voldemort was anywhere to be found. But Voldemort's Death Eaters were. We started fighting with them, but we were loosing. Somehow, Dumbledore found out we were in trouble. He came with a bunch of Order members to get us out of there.

"Sirius was one of the ones who came. He'd been safe the whole time. Voldemort never had him. I'd put everyone in danger, and it was a miracle more of us weren't killed. But Sirius was. I'd gone to save him, but I ended up killing him. All because of a fake image placed in my head by Voldemort.

"When I was unconscious, I had what seemed sort of like a really realistic dream. My Mum, my Dad, and Sirius were all there. They told me the whole story about the Elves and the Tourniquets. I believed them. I thought it was real. It seemed so real. But then I wake up, and Snape – who I know is fully capable of penetrating minds – knows about the dream. I cant believe one would stoop so low as to do something like that. Making me think Sirius was in danger was bad enough, but this? Using him and my parents to convince me of some lie…" Harry trailed off, clearly too disgusted to say any more.

Draco sat back, slightly stunned. The whole thing was a fake image? But it had seemed so real! Then again… how could Snape know they'd had this dream unless he was behind it.

Draco looked at Harry, who was still staring at the far wall. Clearly Harry had been extremely fond of Black, though Draco really couldn't understand how that had come about. He was surprised to find he felt sorry for the Gryffindor. But then, he could sort of imagine how he felt. If the same thing had happened to him with his Mother…

Suddenly, as Draco thought of a hypothetical situation where he was Harry, and his mother was Sirius, Draco felt even more sorry for the raven haired teen. He completely understood now why Harry had been so angry earlier.

"I'm sorry." The words were out of Draco's mouth before he'd even realised what he was saying.

Harry looked up in surprise. "For what?"

Draco shrugged uncertainly. "For everything you just said, I suppose."

It was Harry's turn to shrug. "You don't have to feel sorry for me. And it's not like it's your fault or anything."

Again, Draco shrugged. It seemed the best thing to do in the situation. "I know. That doesn't mean I cant feel sorry for you."

OoO

**AN: Ta da! Right, now I am totally OVER being on a computer, so I am going down to the library right now (I have no internet) to post this and get it out of the way, then I am reading my book. :Nods firmly:**

**REVIEW!**

**Love Bundi**


End file.
